He tried not to think of the future. He assumed they would get back together, that his current condition was temporary and therefore should be enjoyed rather than wasted in melancholic solitude. He went out every night, spent a fortune on dinners and entertainment (he went to four Broadway shows those first two weeks, swallowing the forty-five-dollar ticket prices without a hard gulp, much less choking), and sublet a one-room office from a friend of Karl’s for four hundred dollars a month, picking up his typewriter and papers while Marion was at work. He spent as though the money he was withdrawing from his and Marion’s joint account was a college allowance from his parents and the consequence was going to be a scolding, not bankruptcy.
In the grand explosion of this drama. Tom Lear reading his pages and telling him they were good, but making some suggestions for changes (which Fred executed in a few days, not showing the revisions to Tom), made only a small noise. Tom spoke casually about the writing, seeming neither too impressed nor too dismayed. And he socialized with Fred just as frequently, even putting him up for a few days.
Bart called him daily when he heard the news, took him to lunch, offered his guest room either to sleep or work in, and asked for the one hundred pages with increasing insistence. After the meeting with the therapist, Fred decided (see, he told himself, my self-esteem is okay) to hand them in.
“They’re pretty good, Fred,” Bart said on the phone, with a lack of enthusiasm or despair similar to Tom Lear’s. “They need some work of course, but they’re ready for Bob to see.”
Fred worried during the weekend that Holder was reading his manuscript, but not intensely. He felt a general sense of safety in the world now that Marion had thrown him out. The peculiar rise in his self-confidence puzzled him, made him wonder if he should make any attempt to reconcile with her, whether the marriage was somehow debilitating and dangerous. But even that seemed to be out of his hands, since Marion had all the momentum with her, though why that should be also baffled him. Everything in his life, whether he was married or not, whether he had a place to live or not, whether he had a viable book contract or an income for the year, whether he could stay in the race with his circle of writing friends — everything was in other people’s hands: Marion’s and Bob Holder’s. And yet this absolute lack of control, instead of corrupting his mood and invading his sleep, kept him lighthearted, interested in each day with its surprises and dangers, and let him fall asleep soundly, happily exhausted by the complicated arrangements and busy social life of a tourist in a big city loaded with friends.
Bob Holder phoned Monday morning. “Hi, Fred. How are you?” His voice was pleasant, casual.
“Good. How are you?” Fred asked, feeling more than ever the person he wanted to be.
“Fine, fine. Listen, I think you should come in, maybe this afternoon, and talk about the book.”
“Okay.”
“See if we both feel like continuing with it. I think it may be getting away from us.”
“Un-huh.” Fred was in a stranger’s kitchen, and when, at Fred’s shocked tone, his hosts looked up from their coffee, he smiled bravely at them.
“Can you come in today at three?”
“Sure.”
“Great. See you then.”
“Is everything all right?” he was asked while he returned the phone to the cradle with the slow motions of an accident victim. If the worst were about to happen — a total rejection, a canceling of the contract — everyone would have to be told, but Fred wasn’t sure of the disaster, and if it wasn’t, he wouldn’t want anyone to know that Holder had ever been critical of his work.
He lied, saying that Holder had praised the pages and simply wanted to discuss what lay ahead. Within a half-hour he invented a reason to go out, and called Bart from a phone booth. During the past few months their relationship had progressed to intimacy. Bart got right on. “What’s up, Fred?”
“I heard from Holder. Sounds like he’s dumping the book.”
“What?”
At the surprise in Bart’s tone. Fred already felt relieved. “Well, he said I should come in today to see whether it’s worth continuing with the book at all.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“He said we … he said we should discuss if we want to continue with the book.”
“Well, we do!”
Fred laughed. “Damn right we do.”
“I’ll call him.” Bart spoke as though that would take care of it, a President announcing he was in charge.
“Maybe you shouldn’t. Maybe I’m making too much of it. I don’t know. It may just be the way he talks.”
“I’ll feel my way around. I have to call him about another project anyway, and I’ll casually bring up your book.”
“That won’t fool him. He’ll know.”
Bart snorted. “You overestimate him. He won’t. When are you meeting him?”
“Three.”
“Okay. Where are you gonna be?”
“I don’t know.”
“All right. Call in at two … or, no, call between two and two-thirty.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t worry. Relax.”
“Okay.” Fred said obediently. He wanted to marry Bart after this conversation. The terrible demons that Holder’s conversation had summoned were gone in an instant, their damp invasion of his soul burned off by the heat of Bart’s energy. For a few hours he went about his business without more than a ripple of worry. But as two o’clock approached he began to get a clear image of what it would mean if Holder didn’t proceed with the contract. He would have no immediate income, and unless Marion was willing to take him back, the expense of finding an apartment in New York would be prohibitive without the guarantee of some money. Of course he could probably return to American Sport (the newsstand sales hadn’t collapsed on his departure, but still he was pretty sure …) or some other publication, but that was failure. There would be no more Elaine’s, screenings with Tom, poker games at Karl’s, and so on. Sure, supposedly they were all friends now, but he knew, he just knew, that his standing within the circle he now moved would be compromised. And even if he could keep his new social position, would he enjoy it without the right to it? He had loved being a novelist. Working privately at this great project, being asked about its progress by everyone as though it were a public work, a bridge whose completion was eagerly awaited. That would be gone. The independence, the pride in his achievement, all of it removed from the table of life by a hasty waiter, carrying off plates that still had plenty of nourishment on them.
He called Bart at two. His secretary said he was still out at lunch and would call back. “That’s no good,” Fred said. “He can’t reach me. I’ll phone again in ten minutes.” He decided to get uptown for the meeting and try Bart from there. He took a cab, got stuck in traffic, and wasn’t able to find a telephone until two-twenty-five.
“He just got on a long-distance call to London,” she told him. “Call back in ten minutes.”
He waited six.
“Bart said I should tell you he hasn’t heard back from Holder,” she said this time. “He’ll keep trying. Call back in ten minutes.”
Fred’s confidence in Bart, damning up the stormy waters of fear, broke, washed over him, and smashed him against midtown. The busy streets quavered in his vision. The itemized list of his troubles passed before him, wrapping around the buildings like a stock-market ticker tape recording a crash.